Lady Good-for-Nothing eBook

“That’s the way o’ them,”
commented the old wreck-picker. “Good food,
an’ to let it go. I could teach him better.”

But the boy, years after, read it as another and different
parable.

Chapter II.

PORT NASSAU.

They left the beach, climbed a road across the neck
of the promontory, and rattled downhill into Port
Nassau. Dusk had fallen before they reached
the head of its cobbled street; and here one of the
postillions drew out a horn from his holster and began
to blow loud blasts on it. This at once drew
the townsfolk into the road and warned them to get
out of the way.

To the child, drowsed by the strong salt air and the
rocking of the coach, the glimmering whitewashed houses
on either hand went by like a procession in a dream.
The figures and groups of men and women on the side-walks,
too, had a ghostly, furtive air. They seemed
to the boy to be whispering together and muttering.
Now this was absurd; for what with the blare of the
postillion’s horn, the clatter of hoofs, the
jolting and rumbling of wheels, the rattle of glass,
our travellers had all the noise to themselves—­or
all but the voice of the gale now rising again for
an afterclap and snoring at the street corners.
Yet his instinct was right. Many of the crowd
were muttering. These New Englanders
had no love to spare for a Collector of Customs, a
fine gentlemen from Old England and (rumour said)
an atheist to boot. They resented this ostent
of entry; the men more sullenly than the women, some
of whom in their hearts could not help admiring its
high-and-mighty insolence.

The Collector, at any rate, had a crowd to receive
him, for it was Saturday evening. On Saturdays
by custom the fishing-fleet of Port Nassau made harbour
before nightfall, and the crews kept a sort of decorous
carnival before the Sabbath, of which they were strict
observers. In the lower part of the town, by
the quays, much buying and selling went on, in booths
of sail-cloth lit as a rule by oil-flares. For
close upon a week no boat had been able to put to sea;
but the Saturday market and the Saturday gossip and
to-and-fro strolling were in full swing none the less,
though the salesmen had to substitute hurricane-lamps
for their ordinary flares, and the boy—­now
wide awake again—­had a passing glimpse
of a couple of booths that had been wrecked by the
rising wind and were being rebuilt. He craned
out to stare at the helpers, while they, pausing in
their work and dragged to and fro by the flapping
canvas, stared back as the coach went by.